The accurate measurement of rainfall presents a great engineering challenge with large social impact. A wide range of measurement gauges can be used, each having various limitations. Accumulation measurement methods are the most common due to low cost and simple operating procedures. However, these methods have shortcomings in that they can accumulate debris (including hail and snow) that require maintenance, can be poorly calibrated, can suffer from wind-induced losses, can having moving parts that prevent them from being mounted in non-stationary environments, and can be bulky to ship and install. Drop counting methods have various advantages, in that they do not accumulate debris, which reduces maintenance, have no moving parts, which expands the locales where these can be mounted, and can be more compact, which reduces shipping and installation burden. These devices have additional benefits, in that they can distinguish rain from hail, can be used to calibrate Doppler radar with the so-called “Z-factor” measured as a weighted sum of the drop sizes, and thus can be used to interpret rainfall over a broader spatial domain. Devices using drop counting methods, however, can be power demanding and expensive, especially optical-based drop counting devices that utilize a laser for measurement.